Homeownership Discoveries

I never, in a million years, thought that this is what my life would look like at age 22. Maybe 44, but not 22. We are homeowners. That fact is still settling in. Our home is unbelievably beautiful. Every part of it is like a dream. The kitchen cabinets and counters are perfect. The carpet is perfect. The fireplace is perfect. I have a garage. (I've never had a garage.)

Homeownership is a new adventure and I definitely am facing new challenges I've never faced before. I thought it'd be fun to come up with a list of the discoveries I've made so far since I signed my life away...

• Spiders! (Eek!) When we had our walk through I noticed a web with a few nests in the garage. I made a mental note to find the spider spray. Later, when we were moving in, one of the movers took a closer look at the web. Black widows. We have black widows! Sooooo, off to Lowe's to buy some spider spray. I've only seen one since, and it was dead.
• Weeds. Ugh. I never truly understood how frustrating weeds are. I've never even noticed them before. But every time I look in our front yard, all I can see are the weeds. Bought spray at Lowe's for that, too.
• Mud. That's the downside to living in a new construction. Our front yard has sod but our backyard is straw and seed. I didn't think it was a big deal until I took Misty outside and realized the danger our new carpet was in. My solution: little rain boots for Misty. Cheesy, yes, but it's way easier than trying to wipe off every trace of mud from her paws.
• Chinese. Super random, I know, but we discovered a great Chinese place down the road! Their servings are HUGE and they have lunch specials, so Michael and I can eat for $6 total!
• Stay-at-home moms. Also random. Grocery shopping in this part of time isn't as easy at 11am as I'm used to. There are so many stay-at-home moms with the same idea that you're not really beating the crowds after all.
• Harris Teeter. The only grocery store around. I've always avoided them because I've heard that they're expensive, but I had no choice. (Target has no selection in groceries, btw. Don't bother.) Surprisingly, there were a lot of sales. Like 3 for $11 12-pack sodas. And, they cater to you like you're royalty (might be slightly exaggerating there). Maybe it's Harris Teeter, maybe it's the area I live in now, but they apologized that I had to wait in line when I was the next person in line. They unload and reload your cart and push it over so it's convenient for you. I'm not used to this! (But I can certainly get used to it!)
• Corn fields. I can't drive anywhere without driving through one. Literally. The neighborhood is in the middle of a cornfield. I drove to Monroe and they were everywhere there too.
• Noise. Another downside of new construction. Just because your house is done doesn't mean that the machines are gone and the noise is gone. All day long our cul-de-sac is full of white construction vans and trucks. Hopefully within the next month it should settle down though. Just in time for the construction behind us to begin.

This new adventure is thrilling yet frustrating, exciting yet stressful, and worth every penny. And now our new dining set and guest bedroom set have just come in and all I can do is praise my Lord. I didn't do anything to deserve this. I didn't do anything to earn it. I have no idea how this happened. Yet here I am. Basking in His love. When Michael and I first got married we thought we were 5 years away from buying a house. But God knew the desires of our hearts. He knew exactly what we wanted and followed through on every bit of it. Without us asking. Why? I've asked myself why God chose to bless us a thousand times and this is my answer. I think He's just showing off a little. He's just showing what He can do, just because He can. And, plus, He likes it when we give Him glory, too. All I can do is praise Him for what He's done. Just stand back and praise.

I'd also like to give a huge thanks to everyone who's supported us through this process. Especially to Michael's parents, who let us stay at their house for a month and a half after our apartment lease was up and shove all of our stuff into their garage. And thank you to everyone who helped us write the Bible verses on the wood before our house was done.

"Masterpieces"

I love analogies. Like, it's weird how much I love analogies. So here's my analogy for today:

Reading the Bible is like putting on lotion. (Stifle your laughter, please.) It's easy to forget about lotion until our skin is dry. Then we put on lotion and feel better. But if we don't keep putting on lotion, our skin is going to continue to stay dry.

It's easy for us to forget about reading the Bible until life gets hard. Life gets hard and we google Bible verses about the trial we're going through, read a passage on it, and feel better. But if we don't keep reading the Bible, that trial is still continue to be a challenge. Even better, if we read our Bible when we're not being challenged (or put on lotion when our skin isn't dry), we'll be prepared for the challenge and it'll be easier.

Judge me for my analogy if you want, but Jesus used analogies, and he's the ultimate judge.

On a more serious note, my quiet time today took me to Exodus 27-29. Can I just say, Exodus isn't always the most thrilling book in the Bible. Sure, there are exciting times when the Israelites are rescued from Egypt. And when the Ten Commandments are presented. Or even when baby Moses was rescued from the Nile. But Exodus 25-30 are chapters that provide the Israelites with instructions on how to build the ark of the covenant, the tabernacle, the alter where sacrifices are to be made, and the garments that priests are to wear. Reading these chapters can be like staring at a wall sometimes. It can be so easy for us to skip these chapters and say to ourselves, "This was for the Israelites. There's not much I can learn because I'm not going to build these things. God wants me to learn, so I'll read something that teaches me or encourages me." This is called rationalizing. My accounting teacher used to tell us, "You can rationalize just about anything if you want to." You can rationalize your way out of reading the "boring" scriptures, but they're still a part of God's word. And you can still learn.

Let me tell you what I learned from these "boring" passages. I learned that God had an intricately detailed plan for objects. The tabernacle was, at the end of the day, an object. It had no soul. The alter, an object. Garments - objects. They were important, yes, but they did not need salvation. How much more, then, does God plan our lives? If he has such detailed plans for things, how much more detailed is His plan for us? And then I got to thinking - these "boring" passages were instructions. And if the Israelites did not follow the instructions, the things wouldn't work. If they made a side of the tent too short, that wouldn't be a good tent. If they made the ark and forgot to include the rings for the poles so they could carry it, there would be a lot of dead Israelites. The same is true for us. If we don't follow God's will for our lives, we won't function to our fullest ability. We'll be lopsided - missing something. If we don't follow God's plan for us, sometimes He has to tear down what we did so we can start again. To us - it's destruction. We created this "beautiful" thing that we think is what He wants and when He tears it down we gawk in disbelief. But we created a garment with holes in it - and that won't work.

If God has torn down your "masterpiece", realize it's for a reason. It's to build something better. Don't be discouraged. Don't think He's forgotten you. Trust Him, trust His plan. After all, He had a plan for a tent - and that ended up being a pretty important thing.

One Man Band

I live with a workaholic. Michael is the hardest worker I've ever known. He never complains about it. He can work 16 hour day and I won't hear him say he's tired once. He doesn't take breaks. He works relentlessly on the tasks that he has to get done. What he gets done is the equivalent of 3 men's work. But he can't rest. He can't stop thinking about work when he's home. He has a hard time turning it off.

I know a lot of people like Michael. I'm not like that with my job per se, but I'm like that with the tasks that I need to get done. I bounce from work to school to housework to YoungLife and never let myself get a chance to breathe. TV is background noise for me (so I don't think a bad guy is trying to break in all the time), not entertainment. It's so easy in our fast-paced culture to get sucked into our to-do lists. We LIVE to-do lists, not just write them.

My quiet time today took me to Exodus Ch. 18. Here Moses has been appointed judge over the Israelites, and they come to him with their problems. Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, comes to visit and tells Moses,

"What you do is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone"(verses 18 & 19).

At first I read this and I thought, Jethro, who the heck are you to talk to Moses like that? This is MOSES! He got the people out of Egypt. He parted the Red Sea. I think he knows what he's doing. In all honesty, I thought the story would be about how Jethro didn't know how much we can do when God is on our side.

BRRRRRRRRR. (That's the sound of a buzzer that my dad used to make at me as a kid when I was wrong.) Jethro tells Moses he should delegate his duties and  make other judges. They will take care of the easy stuff and go to Moses with the hard stuff. And it worked.

Workaholics, Moses couldn't do everything himself, and he parted a sea. I haven't heard of any sea-partings lately, so if you haven't even parted a sea, what makes you think you can do everything alone? MOSES NEEDED HELP. MOSES NEEDED REST. MOSES WAS A HUMAN BEING. Give yourselves a break. You don't have to solve every problem. You don't have to be aware of all of the happenings at work. You don't have to match up every lone sock (that one is for me). If you chase after completing tasks, you'll never get anywhere. It's like running in water against the current. You're just going to wear yourself out. Scripture says that work is good (Ecclesiastes 3:22) but it also reminds us to rest (hence the Sabbath day). God has blessed us with so many things outside of work. We need to remember to take time to enjoy those as well.

So what if you let the dishes stack up a little and they start to smell. Does that change your salvation? So what if you were late to work because you got stuck behind 2 school buses and a grandma. Does that change God's promise? So what if you take a weekend to do nothing even though you've had a project in the house that has been halfway finished for weeks. Does that change your eternity? Live for eternity FIRST and the little things seem a lot littler.

Also, I saw a one man band once, and the music really wasn't that great. It was just a lot of sound.